Mahmud Ahmadinedschad would probably find this theory useful, but I do not. Do you really think the Germans herded people into camps in which all of the prisoners starved? Is that what the Allied troops found when they arrived? Did all of the survivors lie when they described gas chambers, which by the way there was ample physical evidence of gas chambers, and furnaces, and genocide.

I don't think that modern warfare has any relationship to the holocaust.
It is one thing to kill civilians as collateral damage in bombing and shelling and quite another to systematically collect, transport, exploit and finally kill them.
Genocides and massacres of civilians were relatively common in the ancient and medieval times. We need no advanced technology or modern culture to commit such crimes, sadly it seems to be part of our natures.

I agree that the Judeo-German split was originally an internal division. But what was complicating matters was the international bolshevik movement which was the reaction to nationalism and its effect on Zionist philosophy. By the time the Nazis took power Jews and Jewish newspapers had already "declared war" on the government. At this time, there were no internment camps but simply policies aimed at removing Jewish influence from the German government and culture and for this reason they became hostile. When Americans saw the behavior of the Nazi government, they likened the Japanese government to it and interned all Japanese nationals. Whether we would have killed those Japanese nationals if the Japs were on our doorstep is not out of the question if we thought that they would be willing to aid the enemy war effort. In effect, were they civilians? Many were. But as in all resistance efforts, if the entire population type is not segregated guerillas will hide among them. I'm imploring folks to think as a military strategist and not as an omnipotent moral force(arguably though, the major fault of many is assuming taking one side is the "truth" of the matter).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rongo

Somehow I don't see where this applies to systematically and deliberately herding millions of civilians into gas chambers.

Could it have been that this was simply an attempt to save resources, resources that were thin and had been stretched in WWI? In fact because of the lack of resources and the subsequent British blockade of Germany millions of Germans died of starvation. It seems rational and logical to attempt to prevent this by limiting POW's and limiting factors that drained resources. They call it Stunde Null for a reason: Germany as it had been for centuries lost its continuinty. An all-out war is logical in a total war like WWII, the morality of the acts of war themselves aside. Which is exactly my point: you cannot call one evil in war because violence is the natural state of war and there is no way to justify destruction. It just occurs in that state, leaving a void and no explanation. The only justification is taking one side over the other, which is subjective and cannot be morally superior.

@Naomasa- Was Poland "outside" of the theater of war? In fact it was very much smack dab in the middle.

@Fiver- Read my response above and consider it from the German perspective. Was there truly no military objective in limiting POW's, decreasing resource strain, and depopulating the war zone and thus limiting the occurences of guerilla movements?

Davidus! In your opinion then the Dresden murders were not a deliberate, cowardly, vicious, and evil attack on civilians?

I wonder if anyone else would not see the logic in internment camps(which are inevitable in the modern age, and in all future wars will be a great source of death), but fail to miss the irony of allowing Dresden to go untouched as a necessity of war. Davidus has exemplified my point: what appears evil to one side appears to be a necessity of war for the other. I actually think bombing civilians is much more heinous than killing them in internment camps... it is far more barbaric to kill someone with a bomb than with bare hands. Yet, still there is a void here and no objective morality. Only one side against the other.

One should argue that he who declared war had the intent against the other. Germany against Poland, and Britain and France against Germany. Not an evil intent, but one to destroy, which as I've shown as my position is subjective and not morally superior. And then again, we can only assume that the Allies simply detested Germany and the Germans simply wanted back East Prussia because those are the only objective facts about the beginnings of the war. Finally, once again, the acts of war themselves are subjective and as I have shown there were military objectives in the internment camps and in killings. Such is the (unfortunate) nature of modern warfare in fact, I argue.

Last edited by TheSunGod; November 10th, 2012 at 04:51 AM.
Reason: Adding some things

@TheSunGod
You should really try to improve your knowledge about the historic events in question before jumping to conclusions.

War in itself is evil in my opinion and always brings about injustice. Some of what happened in WWII can indeed be explained by such an approach - but this does not concern the biggest crimes committed by the Nazis, such as the genocide of the Jews. It was inhuman and not at all determined by the nature of the war; there was no rational reason for it; it was not even remotely in the interest of Germany. Importantly, it was not initiated by some Jewish declaration of war you fantasize about - I hope the reasons for you to bring up such a revisionist claim is that you really do not know better and want to learn. The "Judeo-German split", as you call it, was brought about by the barbaric antisemitism of the Nazis. There were many patriotic Germans of Jewish origin before 1933 such as Fritz Haber and Walther von Rathenau.

The war in the East was planned as a war of annihilation from the German side. This started with the murder of parts of the Polish intelligentsia in 1939 and continued in 1941 with the campaign against the Soviet Union, which was executed with the utmost brutality and disrespect for civilians. Even if we exclude a moral judgement, this behavior was plain stupid, because it meant that potential allies of Germany (e.g. anti-Soviet Poles, anti-communist Ukrainians or Russians, Yiddish-speaking Jews) were turned into enemies.

It is true that in some respects this war of annihiliation came back to Germany herself in the years of 1944/45. But we should not forget that this behavior was a response, and in the end was more limited than what the German forces did in the Soviet Union - and in particular would have done in the case of an Axis victory.

As for Poland being in or out of the theatre of war, the people who were being rounded up, shipped to places like Auschwitz and being gassed were hardly combatants on the frontlines of the fighting, were they?

And as for Jews and Jewish newspapers "declaring war" on the German government, where is your evidence to back up this statement? And do you think that this somehow excuses rounding up six million people and exterminating them?

Mahmud Ahmadinedschad would probably find this theory useful, but I do not. Do you really think the Germans herded people into camps in which all of the prisoners starved? Is that what the Allied troops found when they arrived? Did all of the survivors lie when they described gas chambers, which by the way there was ample physical evidence of gas chambers, and furnaces, and genocide.

Davidus! In your opinion then the Dresden murders were not a deliberate, cowardly, vicious, and evil attack on civilians?

I assume you mean the allied bombing of Dresden in WWII. The fact that you refer to them as 'The Dresden murders' makes your agenda crystal clear.

There are numerous threads on Historum about the morality and effectiveness of the WWII allied bombing campaign in general, and Dresden in particular. I would refer you to them so as not to derail this thread.

To address your points:
Deliberate? Only in as much as the raids were planned, as all such events are.
Cowardly? No one who flew those hazardous missions could be considered a coward. You could level such an accusation at the commanders but as high command staff have not lead from the front since ancient times this viewpoint is invalid.
Vicious and evil attack on civilians? As to weather or not the civilians were deliberately targeted I refer you to the aforementioned threads. Vicious and evil? All a matter of sides and opinions. My opinion is that it is a lot less vicious than systematic genocide. The civilians were not bombed because of their religion or ethnicity, and weather the city was deliberately targeted or not, can be considered collateral casualties. The death camps, on the other hand, deliberately targeted specific ethnic and social groups for political rather than strategic reasons.
I don't see any comparison here.